The global market for fish now means that the shrimp, salmon, sea bass, or cat fish could have begun life on in an Indian, European, or Chinese "farm." Since seafood farming is actually farming of both fresh and salt water species, it's referred to as aquaculture.

How much seafood is produced by aquaculture? < http://www.aquaculture.co.il/Markets/world_output.html>

In 2003, World aquaculture seafood production contributed about 40 million tons, or about 30% of total World fisheries production of about 130 million tons. A decade ago, aquaculture contributed merely 17 million tons, making it the fastest growing food production branch Worldwide.

Where is aquaculture conducted? Almost everywhere, in cold climate developed countries, as well as in tropical climate less-developed countries, over all continents:

1. Remember the recent rounds of problems with Chinese exports to the US? Now, the Chinese are just as good a people as any other... but just as bad too.

2. Raw and greed-based capitalism could well lead Chinese producers of much of the shrimp now being sold in the US to be as unethical as those who poisened pet foods and slipped lead into the paint of children's toys.

3. Seemingly beneficial traditional integrated farming methods of the Chinese may become the source of mutating a new flu pandemic or other animal to human pandemic disease transfer.

Integrated farming of fish and livestock is an old practice consisting of the culture of fish (or shrimp) associated with the husbandry of domesticated animals such as pigs, ducks, chicken, etc. The aim of integrated farming is the recycling of animal wastes (faeces, urine and spoiled feeds) to serve as fertilizers, and sometimes as food for fish raised in ponds, enclosures and cages.

8 Sep 2007 @ 22:07 by vaxen : Good...article. Of course exchange of goods doesn't have to be corrupt. But it is so the corruption must be kept within bounds and laws enforced but...

[link] paints a pretty picture. Food for thought? It wasn't the rat it was the flea!

9 Sep 2007 @ 16:08 by paretokid : Rat/Flea/Geese/Mice/FluPandemicVaxen: Yes, the flea was the ultimate carrier and at the time, we did not realize that the over-abundance of rats and mice could be a road to a pandemic.

By now - grin - we should know better but sadly do not. We continue to believe that we are larger and more powerful than the system we reside within. And the system just keeps on trying to maintain balance with outbreaks of old or new "diseases" to thin out a population which is threatening the whole by its numbers and behaviors.

The chain? Often, humans alter the natural envionment in some manner. It could be through diverting rivers and planting thousands of acres of monoculture plants that creates conditions, which in turn, fuels a population explosion among rodents. The "disease" that erupts to reduce the rodent population may also be transmitted to humans via a flea or to a bird or animal that eats grasses/seeds infected by the feces or urine of the rodent. If we then --unknowingly-- compound the problem by bringing millions of infected ducks, geese, chickens or pigs together to be sold live to then slaughter and cook to eat to celebrate the New Year, we have a wonderful formula for rasing a pendemic. Ordinarily healthy integrated farming methods may also contribute to the problem if the feces used as nutrient is carrying a new flu.

9 Sep 2007 @ 16:29 by vaxen : Biogenesis “It is a dark and stormy night. Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are in the kitchen for a midnight snack when a most disturbing visitor arrives.

‘Wild nights are my glory,’ the unearthly stranger tells them. ‘I just got stuck in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking ways, by the way, there is such thing as a tesseract.’

Meg’s father had been experimenting with this fifth dimension of time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. Now the time has come for Meg, her friend Calvin, and Charles Wallace to rescue him. But can they outwit the forces of evil they will encounter on their heart-stopping jour through space?” -- Madeleine L’Engel/Wrinkle in Time

And all the while the progenitors, the Blackwaters (Aka:Douglas), of this madness (Earth as Iatros' Biodome) -- profit insanely then fly on to infect other 'verses.'

Good thing we exist. Guess we sort of counterbalance the over all schema. It's those hidden contracts that give me the willies...

"The Tesseract"

All about Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time. Her biography in five dimensions.